Cor Leonis Brings Home a Smoothie
by Raberba girl
Summary: Inspired by my friend's artwork of Cor bringing home a certain MT toddler. Not canon-compliant.


Cor Leonis Brings Home a Smoothie

(rough draft)

A Final Fantasy XV fanfic by Raberba girl

_Inspired by breezy-cheezy (Medli45)_

Summary: Inspired by my friend's artwork of Cor bringing home a certain MT toddler. Not canon-compliant.

**Trigger warning for trope-typical nastiness.**

o.o.o

Cor was glad that suppressing the gag reflex had been part of Crownsguard training, because never before in his life had he so keenly felt the need to throw up.

They'd been in the facility for nearly two hours now, collecting what evidence they could. They had apparently triggered some kind of self-destruct mode for the place, so there was not much left to salvage, but they were still going through the wreckage. Already, they had learned a lot. Already, they had learned far, far more than Cor ever wanted to know. When he'd opened that first storage pod and a dead toddler had come toppling out, sprawling across his feet...

Actually, he _had_ thrown up then, but now that he knew what to expect, he let the rest of the squad know and then ruthlessly suppressed his gag reflex as he opened storage pod after storage pod and carried one tiny corpse after another to be laid out on the floor. Each child looked identical to the others, so they were probably clones, but of course that did nothing to lighten the horror. They were still people, _children_, practically babies. Words could not express Cor's relief when a couple of other men came to take over and he was able to head out again.

There had been a lot of pods back there. If all of them contained...MTs in the making, there wasn't going to be nearly enough room in the truck to transport all the bodies. They'd only be able to take a few for study, and the rest would have to be buried or cremated here.

_'Focus.'_ Cor stepped over debris, illuminated dark crevices, read door labels, and looked for more evidence. The Nifs had tried to cover up all the unholy work they were doing here, but their destruction wasn't thorough and there were still things left to salvage. It- To _him_, at least, it wouldn't be worth the knowledge that their attack had caused the deaths of children (so, so many children...), but at least the mission wasn't _entirely_ worthle-

Adrenaline shot through him and he instantly brought up his gun. Nothing happened, and he blinked and processed what he'd subconsciously reacted to.

Red eyes. MT.

But...it wasn't an MT, it was a child. He had fluffy blond hair like the others-

He was ALIVE. The child was looking at him, he was _alive_, and Cor lurched forward in a sort of panic to make sure this one didn't end up dead, too.

The boy was naked, strapped down to a medical table, surrounded by the smoking remains of equipment and machines. Cor distractedly remembered that this chamber had been labeled as a 'Decommissioning Room;' the self-destruct sequence must have started right in the middle of...whatever had been happening here. The door was wide open. This boy had been strapped down and hooked up and then the facility started self-destructing and whoever was in here had fled, and how long had this little one been tied down, cold and waiting be found by enemy forces or die?!

"It's all right now, it's all right now," Cor muttered in a shaky voice, unfastening the restraints. The child was staring at him with huge eyes, red like an MT's but filled with life, face stiff with dried tear tracks. "I'm not going to hurt you, we need to get you out of here..."

The second the boy was free, Cor struggled out of his jacket, wrapped it around the little one, and lifted him up. The boy didn't move or make a sound or even cry again, simply staring at him with those huge eyes. "Are you hungry? Are you thirsty? Is that why you're not crying anymore, because you're dehydrated?" Shifting the boy into one arm, he worked his water flask free and held it to the boy's lips.

There was no response, just more staring. Cor tipped the flask a little; clear liquid trickled out, spilling down the boy's chin. The child's eyes widened even more and he jerked back with a cough.

There was a pause. The boy looked at Cor, and Cor looked at the boy. The boy looked at the flask. Cor held it to his lips again, and this time the boy swallowed, then coughed again. Cor coaxed more water into him until the boy finally slumped against him, looking at the flask with something like dread.

"Had your fill, huh?" He put the flask away and the child's eyes closed. Cor wasn't sure what to do now. He stood there holding the little boy, staring down at him. He'd never held something that felt more precious and vulnerable than this. "We need to get you some clothes."

He eventually found a chamber that looked a bit like a locker room. One compartment contained clothing that fit the tiny boy in his arms, so Cor set down the child and dressed him as the little one stared. "There. Is that warmer?"

The boy looked down at himself, then back at Cor. He took a step closer to Cor and kept staring.

"All right...all right, well..." Cor straightened up, took the child by the hand, and started walking. The little one toddled after him, though it soon became clear that his pace was slow. It was cute, but Cor was getting antsy stuck in this awful facility, so he picked up the boy again and strode back to the pod room.

All four of his people had gathered there; two were conferring together as one typed rapidly into his phone and another crouched at the end of the line of corpses, reaching with tender sadness to smooth back the hair of the one at the end. When the Crownsguard noticed his approach, several of them started to speak at once, but the next moment, they all fell silent in unison and stared.

"Found him abandoned in a 'Decommissioning Room,' " Cor explained. "We must have interrupted the...procedure." He suddenly realized that the child was staring at all the dead clones, and he realized too late that he prooooobably shouldn't have let the kid see them.

He was distracted by his soldiers, who were drawn like moths to light, cooing softly and reaching for the child, a spark of hope in the midst of this place of horrors. The boy, seeing only reaching hands and unfamiliar faces, flinched and hid his face in Cor's chest, tiny fists closing on his shirt.

"Awww, sweet baby," Loren crooned, fingers gently carding through soft yellow hair. "We're really happy to see you, you know?"

"He's the only one?" Hideki questioned.

"The only one I've found," Cor confirmed. "Back up a bit, you're all scaring him."

Sasha was typing on his phone again. "I was able to restore some records. According to this, the kids...the level one MTs...are all accounted for, but let me-" He studied the screen a minute, then leaned to get a close look at the boy's right wrist. He typed in the number that was tattooed there, then nodded. "He's on the list of units scheduled for decommissioning. Looks like we got to him in the nick of time."

Cor didn't mean for his arms to tighten a little around the child at that statement, but...they did.

"We've been here too long," Hideki said. "There are probably enemy forces marching toward us as we speak."

"Yeah, we're getting out of here; just-" Cor knelt down and set the boy on his feet. The child lifted up his head but didn't relinquish his grip on Cor's clothes. "Listen, kid," Cor murmured. "We're leaving, and we're never coming back. If...if you were friends with any of these little guys, well...this'll be your only chance to say goodbye."

Claudius made dubious noises about the wisdom of showing a toddler the dead bodies of his fellow clones, but the boy himself didn't seem upset. He looked out at the line of corpses, then back at Cor, his expression wary.

"Did you guys ever...play together, or talk to each other, or...anything?" Cor asked helplessly.

The child, staring up at him with those big red puppy eyes, looked deeply unhappy. Finally he let go of Cor and took a few uncertain steps toward the bodies, shivering a little. He looked between the Lucians and the dead children, then lay down at the end of the line and closed his eyes, his body going limp.

He looked like just another corpse, and Cor felt a surge of horror. He was already leaping to snatch up the baby as his companions exclaimed in alarm.

For a wild moment, he wasn't completely sure he had the right child, he had the sickening sense that he'd just picked up a dead body, but then the boy's eyes flew open and he stared up at Cor in a mix of relief and alarm, fingers clenching on bits of his shirt again.

"No, kid, _no_, I didn't mean-! Agh; let's get out of here."

o.o.o

It was a long trek back to the transport vehicle, which they'd had to leave at a distance in order to avoid detection. Cor reluctantly agreed when Claudius offered to take a turn carrying the child, but when Cor tried to hold him out, both tiny fists maintained their grip on his shirt.

He stared, then experimentally held the kid out again. The boy didn't move or even bother to look up, but he didn't let go, either. "...Guess that's a 'no,' Claudius," he finally admitted.

Claudius smiled and ruffled the boy's hair, then they all continued on.

It was a relief to make it back to the truck. The three bundled-up bodies and the packs of evidence they'd collected were all stowed away, then there was a bit of an argument about who would have to drive - not because anyone minded driving, but because everyone wanted to ride in the back with the baby. Sasha lost rock-paper-scissors, so he got in the front and everyone else filed in the back after Cor.

The child tensed when the truck started, but still didn't make a sound or look up. "Can you talk, kid?" Cor wondered.

Hideki said something in Nif, and the boy abruptly sat up, staring. Then he scrambled out of Cor's lap and stood at attention, saluting, but had barely begun to reply when the truck's movement sent him stumbling. Cor caught him again, and the boy stared up at him. He said something soft and tentative in what was presumably Nif.

"He wants to know if he's been 'reassigned,' " Hideki translated. "To what, I'm not sure."

"You're being rescued," Cor explained. "We're taking you somewhere safe."

Hideki relayed this in Nif, but the kid only blinked slowly and frowned a little in confusion.

"I'm Cor," Cor said, pointing to himself. "That's Hideki, Loren, and Claudius, and Sasha is the one up there driving. What's your name?"

The little boy pointed uncertainly at him. "Cor?"

"You got it."

The boy then pointed at himself and said something brief. Hideki responded, then the boy held out his tattooed wrist toward Cor. Cor stared at it.

Hideki briefly closed his eyes. "I asked him what his name was."

Cor scowled and tapped the barcode. "_This_ is not a name, kid. Did they ever even bother to give you one?"

The boy had shrunk back a little and was staring at Cor, looking frightened. He didn't respond. He did answer Hideki's question, though.

"He says that names are for humans."

"Yeah, and you're human, so-" Cor burst out in horrified frustration.

"We could just name him ourselves," Loren suggested.

They all looked at her, and she shrugged. "Let's call him Prompto," Sasha called from the front.

"After the video game character?!" Claudius exclaimed.

"I like Prompto," Loren offered. "Both the character and the name."

No one really had any other suggestions, so, "Prompto, then," Cor said decisively, even though he had no idea which video game the younger Crownsguard were even talking about.

"That's you, buddy," Claudius said warmly, now holding the child in his lap. "Prompto! That's you! Hello, Prompto!"

Prompto stared at him and then at the others. Then he saluted uncertainly.

It was a long drive, and the four in the back took turns holding the baby until he started to nod off. Before he got too sleepy to keep his eyes open, they tried various things to get him to smile. No one was successful, but he did stare in fascination as Hideki made various string figures and Loren sang some nursery rhymes and Claudius performed simple magic tricks.

They reached the edge of Lucis at nearly three in the morning. Hideki went to rent a couple of rooms as Sasha insisted on belatedly having a turn, his expression growing soft and gentle as Cor helped settle the sleeping toddler in his arms. "How could anyone hurt a kid like this?"

"Beats me," Cor grumbled. He didn't even like kids, always felt awkward and giantish around them, but the thought of hurting one or even disappointing one was horrifying to him.

The other three men agreed to share one of the rooms to free up the other for Loren, Cor, and Prompto. Cor spent so much time fussing over the little one, making sure he was tucked in and comfortable and warm, that Loren finished getting ready for bed and turned out the light for her half of the room before Cor finally realized he ought to sleep himself. They'd have to be up again in a few hours, and he shouldn't risk waking the child.

o.o.o

Cor woke up because of an unusual noise. It was an important noise, but it was quiet and he couldn't place it at first. Then he remembered: mission, dead kids, motel room, living kid. A kid who was currently sitting up in the bed next to him, tears streaming steadily from huge wet red eyes. The child's soft gasps for breath were what had woken him.

Cor had to climb around Prompto to reach the lamp for their half of the room. "Hey, kid, no, it's okay, it's just us. We rescued you, remember? No more evil child abusing murderers, they're all gone."

Loren was awake by now, too, sliding out of the bed she was using to come sit with Cor and Prompto. Cor was awkwardly patting the boy's head.

"Hey, baby," Loren crooned, laying a hand on Prompto's arm. "You have a nightmare? Or you just woke up in a strange place with people you don't know and got scared? Or both?"

Prompto simply stared up at her. Cor was regretting not rooming with Hideki instead, but too late now; he wasn't going to disturb another of his men's sleep just to get some translations. It was easy to guess why the child was upset. "Let me...get you some water," he fumbled.

It was something of a disaster at first: the child had trouble holding onto the cup he was offered and looked stricken when water spilled down his front. Cor steadied the cup for him and held it to his lips, but then Prompto choked on the liquid as if he didn't know how to swallow. Cor then tried it with his flask instead of a cup, and after Prompto successfully downed a few sips, Cor set the flask down again. His relief was echoed on the boy's face. Maybe his efforts to help had traumatized the poor kid again, but at least he wasn't crying anymore.

"Too bad we don't have a stuffed animal for him," Loren remarked. She picked up a spare pillow and nestled it against the child, wrapping his arms around it. Prompto squeezed, and his tiny fingers gripped the pillowcase. He stared at Cor and Loren with those huge eyes.

"Soft, huh?" Cor said lamely.

Then they all just sat for a while. Cor finally turned on the TV, lowering the volume and settling on some mindless-looking children's cartoon. The boy stared.

After a while, Loren got back into bed and pulled the covers over her face, telling Cor to wake her again if she was needed. Cor continued to sit, watching the little boy stare at the TV screen.

After more than half an hour, Prompto's eyes started to drift closed. His body jerked and he wrenched his eyes back open, staring at the TV.

Cor turned it off. Prompto jumped again and stared at him.

"Time to sleep," Cor said, taking hold of the child and laying him down.

Prompto kept staring at him, still clutching the pillow as Cor pulled the blanket over him. "Come on, kid. I'm not gonna sing you any lullabies, but I know you're tired." He set a hand on the child's tiny back and rubbed back and forth. After a long moment, Prompto squeezed his eyes shut, then opened them again and looked at Cor anxiously. Cor set his hand over the boy's eyes and gently nudged them closed. "Go to sleep."

This time, the eyes stayed closed, and after a while, Prompto relaxed. When Cor was sure he was asleep, he turned the light off and lay down again, listening to the child's breathing until he finally fell asleep himself.

o.o.o

Hours later, Prompto was sitting up and watching anxiously, clutching his pillow, as the adults went about getting ready to leave. Hideki and the others soon arrived, saying they'd already packed up and vacated their own room, and someone suggested that Prompto might need a bath. It hadn't even occurred to Cor to bathe the child, but now that he thought about it, Prompto was probably as grimy as the rest of them had been after their long, stressful night.

The little boy showed no objection to or distress about being undressed, but he did cringe and curl up a bit when Claudius picked him up and started lowering him into the bath. A minute later, his red eyes opened wide and he stared at the water he was sitting in, tentatively patting at it with his hand.

"You like that, kiddo?" Claudius cooed as he picked up the bottle of cheap motel shampoo. "It's nice and warm, huh?"

Loren scooped up a cup of water to carefully wet the child's hair. Prompto stared in surprise, but thankfully didn't freak out like some babies did. He even made grabby hands at the cup and looked pleased when Loren repeated the gesture.

He did cringe at the first touch of shampoo on his head, but after a minute, he uncringed and stared craning his neck, trying to see what Claudius was doing to his hair.

"Ah ah ah, stop squirming, kiddo, you don't want to get this stuff in your eyes! It's not baby shampoo, it'll hurt."

"See if this will distract him," Hideki suggested, leaning over the others to hold out a set of keys to the child.

That did the trick. Prompto seemed utterly fascinated and forgot about the fingers scrubbing through his hair as he ran the keys through his hands, jiggled them in his palms, and repeatedly dropped them into and retrieved them from the water. He made a soft noise of distress when he was clean and the keys were taken away again, then looked up at the adults anxiously when the plug was pulled and water started to drain away.

"All done!" Loren announced, lifting him out of the tub. Claudius wrapped up the boy in a towel in the next moment, then grinned as he turned to Cor, who had been hovering in the doorway. "Here, Marshal, hold him while I dry his hair."

Cor was startled to suddenly find himself with a bundle of child in his arms. He and Prompto stared at each other as Claudius worked on his hair and Loren went to rummage in her bag.

"Shame to put him back in these dirty clothes," Hideki fussed, looking at the child-sized clothes from the cloning facility. Cor wished he had thought to bring extras.

"We'll make do," Loren said, coming back with one of her own tank tops and a pair of pajama shorts.

It took some clever tying and a few safety pins, but they eventually got the child dressed. Prompto stood there, looking adorably ridiculous with his makeshift outfit and disheveled yellow hair as he anxiously stared up at all the adults towering over him.

"Maybe we should have done breakfast before the bath," Sasha said as he brandished a plastic travel container of cereal. He'd raided the continental breakfast and come back with enough for everyone, spreading it all out on the table.

"Okay, kid, time to eat," Cor said, picking up the little boy again.

He hadn't meant to be the one to actually feed the kid, but somehow everyone else was already eating. He looked at the nervous child, then at the food. "Well...I guess pick whatever you want."

Prompto looked at him.

Hideki said something in Nif, presumably a translation. The boy stared at the food, then at him. Hideki spoke again, sounding encouraging, and after several seconds of urging, the child tentatively reached for a biscuit. He squeezed it in his hands, and looked delighted for one second until the biscuit fell apart. The boy looked up at the adults. Seeming dismayed by the expressions on their faces, he hastily tried to push the pieces of biscuit back together again, then started to outright panic when it only crumbled further.

"Okay, forget the biscuit," Cor said, pushing it aside. "Here, do you want cereal?" Kids liked cereal, right? He picked the most obnoxiously sugary-looking one and opened it, setting it in front of the boy. Prompto stared at it, then at him, trembling. "It's to eat. You can have milk with it if you want, or not; it's up to you."

Prompto's eyes darted to Hideki, who translated. Understanding dawned across the child's face and he opened his mouth. After a disconcerted moment, Cor picked up a single piece of dry cereal and gently placed it on the boy's tongue.

Prompto stared at him like he was crazy. After a minute, he suddenly looked surprised. His attention turned inward as he sucked, probably savoring the sweet taste. After a while, though, the surprised interest faded and he started to look anxious again, staring up at Cor. Saliva began to leak from the corners of his mouth.

"You can swallow it, you know," Cor said warily. It was like the boy didn't even know how to eat. Cor ate a piece of the (disgusting) cereal himself, to demonstrate. After a long, hesitation, the boy's throat worked.

Then he started choking.

After that little drama finally ended, Prompto sat shaking in Cor's lap, face a mess with saliva and soggy cereal chunks, tears _streaming_ from his utterly miserable eyes. The adults were all clustered around, hovering helplessly. Loren started to pet Prompto's hair, but stopped at his violent flinch.

"Maybe he really has never eaten anything in his life before," Sasha suggested, looking pale.

Cor felt sick. "Those damn Nifs..."

"Let's try him with the juice, at least," Hideki suggested.

Prompto finally calmed down after successfully managing to swallow, sip by sip, the contents of a carton of apple juice. By then, it was a lot later in the day than Cor had wanted their departure time to be, and the child looked ill when they tried to offer him anything else from the table.

"All right," Cor said, "we'll bring those jelly packets and see if he can handle them later; for now, we need to get going."

Loren drove this time. Claudius was the last one in the truck, and as soon as he sat down, he held something out to Prompto. The little boy stared at it.

"What the hell?" Cor remarked. The thing was a keychain, a tiny chocobo plush that he remembered hanging on a rack by the checkout desk.

"Thought he'd like it," Claudius explained.

Prompto's eyes darted around at all the adults, then slowly, he reached out to grasp the offering. He stared at it, squeezing and relaxing his fist around the plush several times.

"It's a chocobo," Sasha said. "A chocobo keychain, see? Chocobo."

"Coco," Prompto whispered, making Claudius stifle a squeal.

They wiled away the time once more trying and failing to make the child smile. Prompto's eyes were intent on everyone who sought his attention, and he never let go of the keychain. After a while, his stomach rumbled, and he stared down at it in dismay.

"Here, kid," Cor said, ripping a jelly packet with his teeth and then offering it.

It took a few tries before Prompto understood what he was supposed to do with it and then figured out how to do it without choking, but eventually he settled into sucking at the sweet substance, his eyes wide.

"He'll need something for lunch that's more substantial but easy on his stomach," Hideki mused.

Cor blinked. He hadn't been planning to stop for lunch; they were close enough now to reach Insomnia, but that was going at a soldier's pace rather than a child's. It suddenly occurred to him that Prompto would eventually need to pee - might, in fact, need to at the moment, and Cor was under the impression that children had less control over their bladders than adults did.

The discussion was continuing. "There aren't going to be a lot of options," Sasha pointed out. "We don't have time to stop at a real restaurant."

"We need to stop for gas," Cor grunted. "And for the kid to use the toilet."

They eventually found a convenience store. Claudius attempted to take Prompto around to the bathroom, but the little boy actually dropped Coco to cling to Cor with both hands, silent tears rolling down his cheeks. It meant Cor was the one stuck with the awkward task of helping the child use the toilet, but he didn't have the heart to be annoyed when they finished and Prompto buried his face in Cor's chest.

"Come on, now, that wasn't so bad. Hey, kiddo, it's okay. I won't let go of you for a while, all right? It's okay."

When he got back, he found that Loren and Sasha were holding trays of smoothies, the idea being to try different kinds with Prompto and then divide whatever wasn't his favorite between everyone else. The little boy sucked obediently at one straw after another, pausing once as his face twisted in agony.

"Ohhh no, baby, oh no, you have to go slow!" Loren said hurriedly. "It's just a brain freeze, it will go away!" She rubbed at Prompto's temples as he stared up at her with wet eyes and trembling lips. "See? You just have to drink slow, because it's _cold_, honey!"

Hideki explained in Nif, but even so, Prompto was shaking as he slowly obeyed their urging to try again. He slipped slowly at the strawberry and the mango smoothies, then his eyes went even wider than usual at the taste of banana. He paused and stared at the cup, then practically pounced back at the straw.

"Banana it is," Sasha laughed.

Prompto sucked eagerly at his treat once they got on the road, but after only a minute or two, his eyes started to droop closed. He soon fell asleep in Cor's arms, one hand curled around Coco and the other gripping Cor's shirt.

o.o.o

Cor knew better by now than to even try to put the kid down or hand him off to someone else.

Prompto had to be present when he made his report, anyway, so he left his men to type up their own written reports and marched off toward the king's study, Prompto in one arm and the rest of the boy's lunch in his other hand. Prompto woke up at the sensation of his purposeful strides, so his MT-red eyes were open when Cor entered the room. "Your Majesty," he greeted. "Clarus."

The king and his Shield stared. "Cor," Regis said slowly. "Welcome back."

"Thank you, sir," Cor said, standing up even straighter. The other men obviously couldn't tear their eyes away from what he held.

"...I see you have not returned empty-handed."

"We found a great deal of value."

Clarus huffed out a breath. "Cor, what _is_ that?"

Cor felt his teeth clenching. Prompto was not a 'that.' "A smoothie," he said defiantly.

Regis and Clarus stared at him. "A smoothie," Clarus finally repeated, his voice flat.

"Yes." Cor brought the straw closer to Prompto, who eagerly leaned to suck on it even as he kept tight hold of Cor's shirt. The ring at the end of Coco's chain was hooked on one of the boy's tiny thumbs. "As you can see."

"...Perhaps you had better tell the story from the beginning," Regis said.

So Cor did.

o.o.o

A/N: Gonna end it here for now, though just letting you know that Cor does go on to adopt Prom. :)


End file.
